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The Social Giants: the popularity of social networks explained by 2,000 years of research

The Social Giants: the popularity of social networks explained by 2,000 years of research

(This blog is the first of fifteen chapters, plus resources, which will initially be published on the BrightLemon web site (http://www.brightlemon.com) and later this year in a single volume as a book, entitled ‘The Social Giants’. ‘The Social Giants’ explains why Facebook and the most popular web sites and social networks are so successful — by drawing upon a wide array of expertise including over 2,000 years of academic research and theory). social web site?

Apart from the search engines most of the top web sites today are Social Networks"

A couple of points to note:

Of course, search engines and portals are excluded from this list of top web sites since they are essentially conduits to other web sites.

On the specific point of a web site being "social" I am not referring to integration with other external social networks (although that is of course useful) but social elements within the web site itself. This is what ensures the conversation, usage, recommendations and profiling — and all the user and other stakeholder benefits that accompany these — take place within that particular company or organisation's own online space. A Forrester report from Q4, 2010 emphasises the rise of the community platform and that the majority of Fortune 500 companies have already recognised this trend. [7]

Why is Facebook so Popular?

To begin to answer why Facebook and the largest social networks — which I have christened the "Social Giants" — are the most accessed and most engaging sites on the web, research has been collated in three main areas:

academic research on how people interact in groups, within fields such as social psychology and group behaviour;

statistical data from analytics, metrics, surveys and polls of the relevant users and participants in offline and online communities;

a detailed analysis of the information architecture (IA), user experience (UX) and essentially the functionality and front end of the most influential, popular and largest social networks and online communities (and a number of other top sites)

This three-pronged approach aims to arrive at an explanation for the success of the largest social networks. The following is an overview of the contents of the book explaining the research behind a series of explanations for why the most popular web sites got where they are today:

The Social Giants Contents

Introduction

Part I — Social Psychology A crash course

Chapter 1 — Key Figures in Social Psychology — from Socrates to Asabiyaah to Neuroscience.

Part II — A Brief History of the Web, its Evolution and its Future

Part III — Why is Facebook so popular? An analysis of the Social Giants

Chapter 5 — MySpace — the original Social Giant

Chapter 6 — Wikipedia — the knowledge Social Giant

Chapter 7 — LinkedIn — the business network Social Giant

Chapter 8 — YouTube — the video sharing Social Giant

Chapter 9 — Flickr — the image sharing Social Giant

Chapter 10 — Twitter — the realtime messaging Social Giant

Chapter 11 — FourSquare — the location based Social Giant

Chapter 12 — Facebook — the online community Social Giant

Part IV — Common Social Giant Patterns and the Future of Social Interaction

Chapter 13 — Common trends among the Social Giants

Chapter 14 — How other top sites are using Social Giant principles

Chapter 15 — The Future of Social Interaction

Part V — Appendices

Appendix A — Global Rankings of the Social Giants

Appendix B — Glossary of Terms

Appendix C — References

Appendix D — Index

Appendix E — Explanation of Statistics

Why I wrote this book

The single premise, or rather aim, of this book is a simple one — to explain why Facebook and the largest online social networks are so popular. When I first started searching for the answer to this question I expected such a book to already exist — in fact I expected many. Yet (at the time of writing — Christmas 2010) there are none. It is true that the film Social Network (2010) [8], the book that inspired it — the Accidental Billionaires (Ben Mezrich, 2009) [9] and David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect (2010) [10] explain how Facebook became popular via the founders’ stories — but I wanted to know why. I am fortunate that as part of my undergraduate degree — one of the courses taught in the Management school was entitled “Organisational Behaviour” [11]. The main texts at the time were Robbins 12 and Barron & Greenberg 13 which covered theories such as group formation, team interaction, norms, roles and the theories of Maslow 14, Mayo 15 and Skinner 16. Dusting off these old university textbooks immediately began to penetrate the surface of the question: "Why is Facebook so popular?" by explaining human interaction, group behaviour and similar concepts. This quickly led to a wide range of other authors: including Giddens 17, Hogg 18 & Vaughan 19 and the real field of study of relevance — Social Psychology20. The first three chapters of this book are a quick recap of the major figures and theories of research in this area with particular relevance to group behaviour. In our working life my colleagues and I often research and investigate what makes the largest social networks tick. We do so from some very typical (for a web agency), user-driven, web based methodologies examining usability, user interfaces (UX), Information Architecture (IA), functionality and design. Some of this insight is also included here in later chapters since it is highly relevant. And so this book ties together three things:

the academic research of recent centuries of how humans think and behave and interact;

statistical data from analytics, metrics, surveys and polls of the relevant users and participants in offline and online communities;

a web agency perspective of how existing Social Giants are presenting their windows to the world.

Hopefully this multi-pronged approach goes some way to answering the question. And so firstly in order to understand social networks and online communities we have to look at the academic research and theory that has already been conducted which attempts to explain how people form, and behave in, groups and communities, and how the structures of networks affects communication.

“For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods..”

Aristotle, 384-322 B.C.

Introduction to the Social Giants

People are social by nature. We interact. We gather together. We do so in couples, in partnerships and in teams. We join groups - large and small. We deduced millennia ago that there is safety in numbers. Ever since we huddled together for warmth and to protect ourselves from the dangers that lurked beyond the cave, we have continued to do so for all manner of reasons: for fun, for work, for power, for war, for peace, for love, but most of all because we are innately social beings. 21 The very basis of our continuously expanding intelligence and what sets us apart from almost all other life — but also connects us so closely to our nearest cousins in the evolutionary chain, the primates — is our level of social interaction. We nurture and take care of our young and old more than any other creatures on earth. We form bonds and ties that last lifetimes. As a result of these social structures we have passed on learning and knowledge from generation to generation — first via (group) storytelling and the spoken word; then via the written word and print; and now — with globalisation and the digital revolution — we have the most vast and diverse set of communications tools online reaching the widest ever audience.22 The World Wide Web, and online social networks in particular, in the main reflect the real world and our inherent behaviour within it. The majority of the social structures and interactions in cyberspace are either a mirror image or a slightly exaggerated version of our offline traits and societal norms.23 So what is it that makes Facebook, and other online community based web sites like it, so popular? What has spawned this phenomenon in such a short space of time? Looking back at the archives of academic research, in the fields of anthropology, sociology and particularly social psychology it is clear that, whether by luck or by design, it is not due to anything new or revolutionary. The success of the largest online social networks is due to something that has been within us since the dawn of time.

Part I - Social Psychology a crash course

Although there are differences, behaviour on the web, in the main, reflects how we behave offline. In order to understand how people interact online we first have to look at the fundamentals in human behaviour — such as how individuals interact one-on-one, within groups (intra-group), between groups (inter-groups) — and then look at the correlations and differences between offline and online behaviour. There are a number of topics that explain why people act in certain ways including:

Fortunately these topics are all covered by a few main fields of study: Psychology 34 (particularly Social Psychology), Anthropology 35 and Organisational Behaviour 36. Within Part One of this book: Chapter 1 covers a summarised background of relevant philosophical thought and an outline of the key figures in these fields via a simple timeline; Chapter 2 elaborates on the main theories, experiments and case studies; and Chapter 3 summarises the correlations and difference in offline and online behaviour.

Chapter 1 Key Figures in Social Psychology — from Socrates to Asabiyyah to Neuroscience.

The following timeline outlines some of the leading figures in Social Psychology (and Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Organisational Behaviour, Philosophy 37 and Linguistics38) who have spent their life's work attempting to explain how people behave and interact. The progression of this area of science started within a Positivist39 based approach — a scientific approach or belief that all truths are absolute and can either by completely proven or disproven also known as "science as a religion" (as opposed to the post modern viewpoint that there are no absolute truths and that the concept of "truth" is only that which is most beneficial to the current powers that be40). Behaviourism41 is a Positivist perspective which states that behaviour can be explained purely by observation, ignoring thoughts behind it. Experimental Social Psychology42 was born at the beginning of the twentieth century with Norman Triplett43 (who would not have considered himself a Social Psychologist) and Wilhelm Wundt44. Other influential figures include Kurt Lewin (Group Dynamics)45, Leon Festinger (Coginitive Dissonance)46, Harold Kelley (Close Relationships)47, Robert Zajonc (Social Facilitation)48 and Albert Bandura (Social Learning Theory)49. In contrast to Behaviourism the modern approach to Social Psychology is more cognitive — it aims to explain behaviour in terms of unseen factors such as thoughts, feelings and cognitions 50. There is a marked difference between the focus of American Social Pscyhology (intra-group) as compared to European Social Psychology (inter-group) supposedly due to the recent history and relative political stability of both regions.51 One of the significant criticisms of Social Psychology is that it is reductionist it nature: it attempts to explain concepts in theories in continuously simpler terms. Explaining behaviour in terms of neuroscience is particularly affected in this way.52 This is discussed further in chapter two.

Emile Durkheim (1858 — 1917)

Wilhelm Wundt (1832 — 1920)

Founded the first experimental laboratory of psychology in Liepzig, Germany (1879). One of the founders of modern Empirical Pyschology. 61

Gustav Le Bon (1841 — 1931)

French Psychologist. Author: The Crowd, a study of the Popular Mind, 1896. Coined the term "Group Mind".62

Norman Triplett (1861 — 1931)

Indiana University Psychologist, devised the theory of Social Facilitation. In 1898, in what is now widely regarded as the first published work on Social Psychology, Triplett noticed that cyclists tend to have faster times when riding in the presence of a counterpart as opposed to riding alone.63

Theodore Vail (1845 —1920)

1910s

John Watson (1878 — 1958)

Christian Ruckmick

(1912) Rapid growth of laboratories devoted to psychological research: from 1890-1910 thirty-one American universities established facilities.[88]

Thomas and Znaniecki

(1918) Defined social psychology as the scientific study of attitudes rather than social behaviour. (1928) Thomas theorem, a theory of sociology: "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences". (The Chicago School/ Ecological School). [90]

Julian Rotter (1916 — )

Solomon Asch (1907 — 1996)

(1946) Gestalt-based configural model of impression formation — in forming first impressions we latch on to central traits which play a disproportionate role in our overall/final impression. (Peripheral traits are those which player a lesser part). [108]

Howland, Janis, Kelley

Julian Rotter (1916 — )

Leon Festinger (1919 — 1989)

(student of Lewin) 1954, Festinger and Carlsmith (1957 & 1959) Experiment: cognitive dissonance — a smaller reward can change attitudes more than a larger reward (in contrast to the reinforcement theorists of the time). Cognitive consitency: people try to reduce the inconsistency among their cognitions, because they find the inconsitency unpleasant. Cognitive consitency later fell out of fashion in the 1960s as evidence gathered that people are highly tolerant of cognitive incosistency [121]

Michael Foucault (1926 — 1984)

M. Scott Peck

Jones & Goethals

(1972) Recency effect — later presented information has disproportionate influence on social cognition (primacy effects are more common therefore clear implication that first impressions are indeed important) [153]

Jones

Serge Moscovici

Introduction a la psychologie sociale (1973) — resurrected interest in Durkheim’s work with his idea of social representations. (1961). Also stimulated radical new interpretation of social conformity - minorities can change the attitudes of the majority. e.g. NGOs like Amnesty and small NGOs [155]

Hamilton & Zanna

(1974) A negative impression is much harder to change than a positive one. [156]

Theda Skocpol

Tajfel and Fraser

Henri Tajfel and Turner

(1979) Social Identity Theory a far reaching new approach to studying intergroup relations - a person’s identity is defined in social terms by belonging to a group. He questioned Sherif’s findings that an objective clash of interests was required for intergroup conflict. [161]

1980s

Sears

(1980) In the absence of information we tend to assume the best of others, forming a positive impression. [162]

Fiske

(1980) However with negative information we form a disproportionately negative impression. [163]

Nisbett and Ross

(1980) Taylor (1981) Cognitive misers People use the least complex or demanding cognitions that are able to produce generally adaptive behaviours. [164]

Martin, R., Suls, J., and Wheeler, L.

Landers et. al.

(2001) When the human genome was finally mapped in 2003 researchers felt that the 20,000-25,000 genes and 3 billion chemical base pairs making up human DNA were insufficient to account for the massive diversity in human behaviour - therefore context and environment play a signficant role. A final conclusive answer that nurture is as important as nature. (Social Psychology steps in to explain this diversity). [187]

We are social beings. Although this introduction hints at an Evolutionary Social Psychology perspective (how we behave can be explained by traits that favour our survival) which is a more recent proposition, there are numerous sources to cite for this argument from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, http://www.constitution.org/ari/ethic_08.htm#8.3 through to the present day.

Norman Triplett (1898) Indiana University Psychologist, Social Facilitation Triplett noticed that cyclists tend to have faster times when riding in the presence of a counterpart as opposed to riding alone.

Telegram sent by Groucho Marx to the Friar's Club of Beverly Hills to which he belonged, as recounted in Groucho and Me (1959), p. 321 "Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member", http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx